Well, I didn’t really see either of them – I went to bed last night with the beginnings of a cold, and by morning it’s a good day to stay in bed. The weather at Liefdefjorden is overcast and raining, so it’s easy to make the decision to trade a 90 minute zodiac cruise for the safety of my bed.
In the afternoon, there is a visit to the most northern ‘bar’ in the world (Texas Bar), which is in fact a small hut built for hunting. An improvised bar is established at the hut, but I couldn’t care less about drinking there. It is raining still and also an easy decision to guard against the virus getting a firm grip on me by staying indoors on the ship. The expedition leader finds a male polar bear on the hill near Texas Bar that has starved to death, but keeps quiet about it to to passengers.
Svalbard is very different from the Antarctic, with receding glaciers and barren hillsides, and lacks the colonies of wildlife. It is also wildly different to South Georgia Island, and we have yet to see much birdlife other than the guillemot colonies and a few stray Northern Fulmars and Kittiwakes. A few passengers are struggling with the lack of interesting landscape and scarcity of wildlife.
